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In 2000, Antioch College was again subject to media attention, after inviting political activist and death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal and transgendered rights advocate and Jamal supporter Leslie Feinberg to be commencement speakers. Graduating students had chosen Jamal and Feinberg to highlight their concerns with capital punishment and the American criminal justice system. Many conservative commentators criticized the Antioch administration for allowing students to choose such controversial commencement speakers and the college administration received death threats. Antioch President Bob Devine chose not to overturn the students' choice of speakers, citing the ideals of free speech and free exchange of ideas, and likened the media reaction to the coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1965 commencement address. —source

Leslie Feinberg came of age as a young butch lesbian in the factories and gay bars of Buffalo, N.Y. in the 1960s. Since that time, Feinberg has been a grass roots activist
and a journalist. Ze is known in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movements in the U.S. and countries around the world. The lesbian magazine Curve
named Feinberg one of the "15 Most Influential."

Feinberg was the opening speaker at the historic rally on the 25th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall rally in New York City-a rally that drew one million people from across
the country and around the world. A video about Leslie Feinberg entitled Outlaw has been distributed by Women Make Movies nationally and internationally.
Feinberg's novel, Stone Butch Blues, published on March 1, 1993 by Firebrand Books, has received a wildly popular response in the United States and has been translated into
Chinese, German, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Slovenian and Hebrew. The novel won the prestigious American Library Association Award for Gay and Lesbian Literature and a
LAMBDA Literary Award.

Feinberg's non-fiction work, Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul is the first analysis of the historical roots of transgender oppression.
Transgender Warriors won the 1996 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Non-Fiction. In Spring 1996, Beacon released the paperback edition, newly subtitled: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Feinberg's non-fiction book Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue (Beacon) contains a compilation of speeches by the author with written portraits by other trans activists.

Drag King Dreams, Feinberg's second published novel, was released by Carroll & Graf (Avalon) in March 2006. Feinberg is a national leader of Workers World Party, and
a managing editor of Workers World newspaper. S/he is well-known in the U.S. and many other parts of the world as an activist who works to help forge a strong bond
between the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans communities. As a trade unionist, anti-racist and socialist, Feinberg also organizes to build strong bonds of unity between
these struggles and those of movements in defense of oppressed nationalities, women, disabled, and the working-class movement as a whole. Feinberg has worked for
more than three decades in defense of the sovereignty, self-determination and treaty rights of Native nations and for freedom of political prisoners in the U.S. Ze is an
internationalist and has been part of the anti-Pentagon movement since the U.S. war against Vietnam. Feinberg has toured the country, speaking at Pride rallies and protest marches, and at scores of colleges and universities. To see a selected list of events that Feinberg has addressed, and other activities.